lifetime
by DethGab
Summary: It was cold and wet and awkward because he was short and I was not and his hair was poking my lips and very itchy on my neck. Best hug ever. Axel Roxas Language


Axel

* * *

Xigbar, Demyx, and I were playing poker on the terrace off of Luxord's room; he had started dealing us all total shit—probably because he thought it was funny—when I noticed him. Xigbar was trying to get Luxord to confess that he was being a dick, Demyx was watching them with a mildly amused expression, and I idly watching Roxas walk. I had to wonder what was up, because he was just walking outside and _nobody_ walks outside of the Castle. Then I noticed how tense he was, the resolute set of his shoulders, the stiff angle of his chin, the purpose to his gait, it also helped that Xigbar is a douche bag and decided to say, "I already called dibs on hunting him down." There weren't really many things that that could have meant. Which damn near floored me. He'd never been the most open kid, or the nicest, or the most trusting, or the most talkative—which kind of goes along with being open, but you can talk yourself hoarse and still not say a damn thing—but, that's beside the point, because I'd always known what he wasn't. Even so, I'd managed to convince myself that I knew him pretty well, all things considered. So it's understandable that, when he decided to just up and leave, without even a reason, or a 'bye', or a backward glance, I thought it was cold, even by his thermometer, and all manner of unfair. Which is strange because I wasn't supposed to be able to 'feel', so it really shouldn't have mattered to me so much. But, of course, it bothered the _piss _out of me.

After the pieces fell together, mostly because of Xigbar's vicious prodding and Luxord's sly smirk, my brain almost exploded. I literally tripped on my cloak trying to get up out of my seat, Xigbar laughed so hard than snot shot out of his nose which would have been just deserts in a humiliation for slight embarrassment kind of way, but he didn't really care about what came out of his nose in polite company. It didn't matter either way to me because I didn't stick around; I was busy hurling myself down treacherously long flights of stairs. But then I remembered, _Hey, dumbass, you can just open a portal…_. Which I did.

In the Freaky Tunnel of Dark Doom, I'd planned out the entire scene in my head. He'd be all piss and vinegar and I'd grab him and force him to look at me, really _look_. I'd say something cheesy and he'd see how much I wanted him to stay and he would and we'd… whatever. It didn't really matter what happened after, he could be prissy and pissed off all he wanted, but he would stay. Which left a lot of room for crazy shit, stuff that I wasn't even thinking about, to hit the fan and come down like bullets, because it was Roxas I was dealing with and if someone wasn't shot through, Roxas wasn't being Roxas. I also didn't actually have an _actual_ plan; I had a vague outline of a plan's blueprint. Which is to say, I was fully prepared for him to rip a new hole into my person via The Bad Plan, which has happened before.

I should have known better. Really.

The tunnel spat me out by our tower. It was ours because, as I mentioned, no one ever actually came out of the Castle and into the world. Except for maybe Xemnas, every once in a while, if only to get a differently angled view of Kingdom Hearts, because Kingdom Hearts is the most important thing ever. I would have bet money that no one else gave a crap about what went on outside the castle's walls. Our tower was called Memory's Skyscraper or something else equally trite and stupid, because Xemnas likes _deep _names, calling it The Highest Place On the World Until I Built This Eyesore of a Castle is kind of inconvenient and, though it is true, it's a bit of a mouthful. Then I spotted him and all thoughts not related to him were Irrelevant. He had surely seen me, I came out of a portal a couple paces ahead of him, and it's not like I'm ease to miss, _red_ hair, pale skin, and all that other eye catching business. So he was ignoring me and I was trying to look cool because I was sure that since I was right in front of him he would acknowledge me.

Not so, he just kept on walking and glaring but pointedly not looking in my direction. He was right in front of me, less than two feet away, and, I don't know, maybe I thought there would be a split second of eye contact and he would see what a little bitch he was being. Or maybe the world would slow down and he would feel my gaze on him. Blah. None of that stupid shit happened. He just kept on walking and ignoring me.

So, I realized, I was going to have to be a little more proactive.

"You can't just _go_, Roxas." More exasperated than gooey; overall, not the effect that I was going for, but it was a start. I grabbed his arm as he tried to take another step. Really, I didn't expected him to turn on his own, his scowl had told of just how done he was with the Organization—with me, I was fully prepared to bodily turn him to look at me. But he spun on the spot to face me. I _had_, however, expected his anger, I expected him to breathe his verbal fire directly into my face while wearing that furious look, the one that was midway between the surface of the sun and hellfire. Instead, I got a flat, stony stare, about the temperature of a corpse.

Whiplash.

This was not going as well as I'd convinced myself it would. Glaring, snarling, insults, threats—even actual violence—I could take it all if he decided to dish it, I _had_ handled all of his shit before, many times over. But, apparently, I'd never seen him _angry_. I didn't like it. The expression he wore, right then, scared me. It told me that he'd lost all confidence, and what little trust, he'd had in me, I was nothing to him, not anymore. I regretted everything that I'd ever done to keep him from his truth, I was sorrier than I'd ever been in my entire, miserable life—non-life—whatever the fuck it was that I had. I'd thought that he was… I don't know, content or happy or something. But when confronted with his cold eyes, I had to re-evaluate.

He could probably just burst from all the terrifying surprises he could pull from his ass.

"No one would miss me." He tossed this right into the air between us with such bland, expressionless certainty that I had to shut down for a moment. My upper brain just… stopped, my breath caught, my grip on his arm slackened. I watched my expression crumple in his pretty blue eyes. I looked utterly lost; I _felt_ lost, for a second, I was positive I would cry.

Fucking disgusting.

He stood steady; watching silently and giving me nothing but my own pathetic reflection. My brain abruptly kicked from standstill to high gear. He couldn't seriously think that, it wasn't possible that he could simply disregard… everything.

"You know that's not true, Roxas…. _I_ would. You know I would." Edging on desperation. I really should have tried to come up with a plan that didn't depend so much on the volatile eddies of emotion rolling between us.

He wilted, ever so slightly, around the edges, his lips twitched then pressed into a wry line, his eyes took the slightest edge of pity. "You _can't_." he said this as if I wasn't all kinds of up in his face, moments away from begging him to stay. Anger welled in the pit of my stomach, like bile it rose up through my chest, melting away the knot of dread there. Whatever came now, came. I was angry. We'd spent a year together; laughing and going on missions and eating fucking _ice cream _at goddamn _make out spots_. Then, after forcing his damn way into my chest and setting up camp where my heart should have been, he just decides to _leave_?

Fuck. That.

He opened a portal and turned to step into it. I yanked his ass right back to me; he wasn't leaving so easily. Startled, he ended up against my chest. The portal closed. I grabbed him by the shoulders and pushed him away a bit, fully prepared to shake some sense into him, I glared into his wide-eyed face, searching, I guess, but for what, I couldn't be sure until I found it.

I didn't find it.

"_Fuck_ what they tell us. I don't want you to leave, I—" _love you, man._ Did I? Did I _really_? When I thought of him leaving, was the heavy, suffocating dread I felt love? Was laughing and being totally in sync and putting up with our differences and being best friends love? Was feeling like I might, possibly, have a heart love? How would a Nobody know? How does anybody know?

His face closed over his surprise. Though I hadn't actually finished the thought, I think he knew the general area I was getting at. "You. Don't. Have. A heart." He said it slowly and there was a beat of silence as we both digested it. The cogs in my brain exploded into angry action. A 'heart' is an organ that pumps fucking blood, people used to think that the liver was the center of emotion. If we still thought that, would I have no liver? Xemnas tried to feed us all that crap about being empty husks; if that were the case then why did we have thought and will? Why did we need to eat and drink and sleep instead of just feeding on hearts? A 'husk' would be a zombie, or a heartless, or something else equally stupid and vacant and easy to manipulate. Maybe not the 'easy to manipulate', because, right then, I had gone from nearly crying to _pissed_ in record time, either he had some wicked affect on how I felt or, I was bipolar. The part that kicked me was, he wasn't even consciously trying to control me that way. In matters of Roxas, I think it's safe to say that I can go completely and utterly insane at the drop of an eyelid.

A 14-year-old kid is the moon to my emotional tide. Fucking _super_.

As it stood, then, his words echoing in my head, I realized that I was dead tired of hearing the word 'heart' and equally tired of people telling me I didn't have one. My grip on his shoulders tightened and I really, _really _wanted to shake him. Instead, I pulled him back into me and wrapped my arms around his stupid waist. The perpetual rain dampened his golden spikes and they only got damper when he rested his head on my chest and some of them found their way into my mouth. It was cold and wet and awkward because he was short and I was not and his hair was poking my lips and very itchy on my neck. Best hug ever.

"I don't care if I don't have a heart, or a liver, or kidneys, or lungs, or anything else. I have no idea _what_ the hell it is I'm feeling, if it's 'residual' it must have been strong enough to destroy worlds before. I—Roxas, you're my best friend, without you, there is nothing for me. I'll be damned if you seriously think I'm going to just lie down and let the best thing that ever happened to me traipse off into the ether."

Roxas stood still in my arms as I blathered, listening quietly and, when I was done, he stayed silent and still for several moments before he sighed (probably rolled his eyes, too) and hugged me back. The rain let up to a thick, cold drizzle as we stood there, hugging like a couple of nancies for only who knew how long, but I felt like I would explode, my chest filled and I couldn't see for smiling so hard. I felt… like I belonged (or some other such ridiculous BS)

Roxas sighed again and pulled away, he looked up at me, staring hard, before taking a couple paced back, away from me. "I… you're my best friend, Axel, my _only _friend. I really don't want to leave you, but I have stuff I need to do." He took another step back, stared at me as a portal I didn't realize he'd opened engulfed him. It closed on his grim expression of apology. Apparently, he _was _leaving that easily.

I'm really not sure how long I stood there mouth agape in the cold, misting rain, but, I'm sure that if I'd had a heart, I would have caught my death.

* * *

Inspired by _Sleeping With Giants (Lifetime)_ by The Academy Is…


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